Extreme Denial (17 page)

Surprising him, the flashlight moved away, heading back toward the front door. That didn’t make sense, either. Unless ... Did he dare trust what he was thinking? A neighbor might have decided that the muffled staccato blasts he was hearing definitely didn’t come from firecrackers. The neighbor might have called 911. The flashlight might belong to a policeman. That was how a lone policeman would behave—as soon as he saw the body, not knowing what he was involved in, possibly a gunfight, he would retreat and radio for help.

Decker’s already sickeningly rapid heartbeat pounded even faster. Under other circumstances, he wouldn’t have dared to take the risk of revealing his position. But Beth had been shot. God alone knew how serious the wound was. If he hesitated any longer, she might bleed to death in the crawl space. He had to do
something.

“Wait!” Decker shouted. “I’m in the laundry room! I need help!”

The flashlight beam stopped going away, glared back along the hallway, and focused on the entrance to the laundry room. Decker immediately realized the further risk he had taken. His ears were ringing so painfully that he couldn’t tell if anyone shouted back to him. If he didn’t answer or if what he shouted didn’t logically connect with what the policeman shouted (assuming this in fact
was
a policeman), he would make the policeman suspicious.

“I live here!” Decker shouted. “Some men broke in! I don’t know who you are! I’m afraid to come out!”

The flashlight beam shifted position, as if whoever held it was finding cover in a doorway.

“I can’t hear you! There was shooting! My eardrums are messed up!” Decker shouted. “If you’re a policeman, slide your badge down the hall so I can see it from this doorway!” Decker waited, glancing nervously from the doorway to the opposite door that led into the closet, apprehensive that he was leaving himself open to an attack. He had to take the chance. Beth, he kept thinking. I have to help Beth.

“Please!” Decker shouted. “If you’re a policeman, slide your badge down!”

Because he couldn’t hear it skittering, he was surprised by the sudden appearance of the badge on the brick floor of the corridor. The badge was stopped by the body of the gunman.

“Okay!” Decker’s throat was sore. He swallowed with difficulty. “I’m sure you’re trying to figure out what happened! You’re as nervous as
I
am! When I come out, I’ll have my hands up! I’ll show them first!”

He set the handguns onto a laundry counter to his right, where he could scramble back and grab them if he had misjudged the situation. “I’m coming out now! Slowly! I’ll show my hands first!” The moment he stepped free of the doorway, his hands high over his head, the flashlight beam shifted swiftly toward his eyes, nearly blinding him, making him feel more helpless.

It seemed as if time was suspended. The flashlight beam kept glaring at him. The policeman, if that was who this was (and despite the badge on the floor, Decker was suddenly having powerful doubts), didn’t move, just kept studying him.

Or was it a gunman aiming at him?

Decker’s eyes felt stabbed by the flashlight beam fixed on them, and he wanted to lower a hand to shield his vision, but he didn’t dare move, didn’t dare unnerve whoever was studying him. The flashlight beam dropped down to his nakedness, then returned to his eyes.

At once time began again.

The flashlight beam moved, approaching. Decker’s mouth was terribly dry, his vision so impaired that he couldn’t see the looming dark figure, couldn’t see how the man was dressed, couldn’t identify him.

Then the flashlight and the figure were close, but Decker still couldn’t tell who confronted him. His raised hands felt numb. He had the sense that the figure was talking to him, but he couldn’t hear.

Unexpectedly the figure leaned close, and Decker was able to make out dimly what the figure shouted.

“You can’t hear?”

The peripheral glow of the flashlight showed that the figure, a stocky Hispanic man, wore a uniform.

“I’m almost deaf!” The din of the alarm and the ringing in his ears were excruciating.

“...
are you?”

“What?”
Decker’s voice seemed to come from far outside himself.

“Who are you?”

“Stephen Decker! I own this house! Can I put my hands down?”

“Yes. Where are your clothes?”

“I was sleeping when they broke in! I don’t have time to explain! My friend’s in the crawl space!”

“What?”
The policeman’s tone expressed less confusion than astonishment.

“The crawl space! I have to get her out of there!” Decker swung toward the laundry room, the flashlight beam swinging with him. His hands trembled as he grabbed the metal ring recessed into the trapdoor. He pulled the hatch fiercely upward and groped down the wooden steps into the darkness, smelling earth and dampness and the disconcerting odor of blood.

“Beth!”

He couldn’t see her.

“Beth!”

From above him, the flashlight beam filled the pit, and he saw Beth huddled there, trembling, in a corner. He rushed to her, almost out of the flashlight’s range but not so far that he didn’t notice how pale her face was. Her right shoulder and breast were smeared with blood.

“Beth!”

He knelt, holding her, ignoring the dirt and cobwebs that clung to him. He felt her sobbing.

“It’s all right. You’re safe.”

If she responded, he didn’t know. He couldn’t hear, and he was too busy guiding her toward the steps from the crawl space and up toward the flashlight, the policeman helping her up, startled by her nakedness. Decker covered her with a dirty shirt from a hamper in the laundry room. She stumbled weakly, and he had to hold her up as they made their way along the corridor toward the front door.

Decker had the sense that the policeman was shouting to him, but he still couldn’t hear. “The alarm pad’s near the front door! Let me turn it off!”

He reached the pad on the wall at the exit from the corridor and briefly wondered why it was illuminated when the electricity was off, then remembered that the alarm system had a battery that supplied backup power. He pressed numbers and felt his shoulders sag in relief when the alarm stopped.

“Thank God,” he murmured, having to contend now only with the ringing in his ears. He was still holding Beth up. In dismay, he felt her vomit. “She needs an ambulance.”

“Where’s a phone?”
the policeman shouted.

“They aren’t working! The power’s off! The phones are down!” Decker’s ears felt less tortured. He was hearing slightly better.

“What happened here?”

Dismayingly, Beth slumped.

Decker held her, lowering her to the brick floor in the vestibule. He felt a cool breeze from the open front door. “Get help! I’ll stay with her!”

“I’ll use the radio in my patrol car!” The policeman rushed from the house.

Glancing in that direction, Decker saw two stationary headlights gleaming beyond the courtyard gate. The policeman disappeared behind them. Then all Decker paid attention to was Beth.

He knelt beside her, stroking her forehead. “Hang on. You’ll be all right. We’re getting an ambulance.”

The next thing he knew, the policeman had returned and’ was stooping beside him, saying something that Decker couldn’t hear.

“The ambulance will come in no time,” Decker told Beth. Her forehead felt clammy, chilled. “You’re going to be fine.” I need to cover her, Decker was thinking. I need to get her warm. He yanked open a closet behind him, grabbed an overcoat, and spread it over her.

The policeman leaned closer to him, speaking louder. Now Decker could hear. “The front door was open when I arrived!
What happened
?
You said someone broke in?”

“Yes.” Decker kept stroking Beth’s hair, wishing the policeman would leave him alone. “They must have broken in the front as well as the back.”

“
They?”

“The man in the hallway. Others.”

“Others?”

“In my bedroom.”

“What?”

“Three. Maybe four. I shot them all.”

“Jesus,” the policeman said.

FIVE

—————

1

A chaos of crisscrossing headlights gleamed in the spacious pebbled driveway outside Decker’s house. Engines rumbled. Radios crackled. The eerily illuminated silhouettes of vehicles seemed everywhere, patrol cars, vans, a huge utility truck from Public Service of New Mexico, an ambulance speeding away.

Naked beneath an overcoat that didn’t cover his bare knees, Decker leaned, shivering, against the stucco wall next to the open courtyard gate, staring frantically toward the receding lights of the ambulance speeding into the night. He ignored the policemen searching the area around the house, their flashlights wavering, while a forensics crew carried their equipment past him.

“I’m sorry,” one of the policemen said, the stocky Hispanic who had been the first to arrive and who had eventually introduced himself as Officer Sanchez. “I know how much you want to go with your friend to the hospital, but we need you here to answer more questions.”

Decker didn’t reply, just kept staring toward the lights of the ambulance, which kept getting smaller in the darkness.

“The ambulance attendants said they thought she’d be okay,” Sanchez continued. “The bullet went through her right arm. It didn’t seem to hit bone. They’ve stopped the bleeding.

“Shock,” Decker said. “My friend’s in shock.”

The policeman looked uncomfortable, not sure what to say. “That’s right. Shock.”

“And shock can kill.”

The ambulance lights disappeared. As Decker turned, he noticed confused movement between the headlights of a van and the hulking Public Service of New Mexico utility truck. He tensed, seeing two harried civilians caught between policemen, the indistinct group coming swiftly in his direction. Had the police captured someone associated with the attack? Angry, Decker stepped closer to the open gate, ignoring Sanchez, focusing his attention on the figures being brought toward him.

A man and a woman, Decker saw as the nearest headlights starkly revealed their faces, and immediately his anger lessened.

The two policemen flanking them had a look of determination as they reached the gate. “We found them on the road. They claim they’re neighbors.”

“Yes. They live across the street.” The harsh ringing persisted in Decker’s ears, although not as severely. “These people are Mr. and Mrs. Hanson.”

“We heard shots,” Hanson, a short, bearded man, said.

“And your alarm,” Hanson’s gray-haired wife said. She and her husband wore rumpled casual clothes and looked as if they had dressed quickly. “At first, we thought we had to be wrong. There couldn’t be shots at your house. We couldn’t believe it.”

“But we couldn’t stop worrying,” Hanson said. “We phoned the police.”

“A damned good thing you did,” Decker said. “Thank you.”

“Are you all right?”

“I think so.” Decker’s body ached from tension. “I’m not sure.”

“What
happened
?”

“That’s exactly the question
I
want to ask,” a voice intruded.

Bewildered, Decker looked beyond the gate, toward where a man had appeared, approaching between headlights. He was tall, sinewy, wearing a leather cowboy hat, a denim shirt, faded blue jeans, and dusty cowboy boots. As Officer Sanchez shone his flashlight toward the man, Decker was able to tell that the man was Hispanic. He had a narrow, handsome face, brooding eyes, and dark hair that hung to his shoulders. He seemed to be in his middle thirties.

“Luis.” The man nodded in greeting to Officer Sanchez.

“Frederico.” Sanchez nodded back.

The newcomer directed his attention toward Decker. “I’m Detective Sergeant Esperanza.” His Hispanic accent gave a rolling sound to the r’s.

For a fleeting moment, Decker was reminded that
esperanza
was the Spanish word for “hope.”

“I know this has been a terrible ordeal, Mr ...?”

“Decker. Stephen Decker.”

“ You must be frightened. You’re confused. You’re worried about your friend. Her name is ...?”

“Beth Dwyer.”

“Does she live here with you?”

“No,” Decker said. “She’s my next-door neighbor.”

Esperanza thought about it, seeming to make the logical conclusion. “Well, the sooner I can sort out what happened, the sooner you can visit your friend in the hospital. So if you bear with me while I ask you some questions ...”

Abruptly the light above the front door, a motion detector, came on. Simultaneously the light in the vestibule came on, casting a glow through the open front door.

Decker heard expressions of approval from the policemen checking the outside of the house.

“Finally,” Esperanza said. “It looks like Public Service of New Mexico managed to find the problem with your electricity. Would you tell Officer Sanchez where the switches are for the outside lights?”

Decker’s throat felt scratchy, as if he’d been inhaling dust. “Just inside the front door.”

Sanchez put on a pair of latex gloves and entered the house. In a moment, lights gleamed along the courtyard wall and under the portal that led up to the front door. The next thing, Sanchez had turned on the lights in the living room, their welcome glow streaming through windows, illuminating the courtyard.

“Excellent,” Esperanza said. The lights revealed that he had a 9-mm Beretta holstered on his belt. He looked even thinner than he had seemed in the limited illumination from the headlights and flashlights. He had the weathered face of an outdoorsman, his skin swarthy, with a grain like leather. He seemed about to ask a question when a policeman came over and gestured toward a man beyond the open gate, a workman who had
Public Service of New Mexico
stenciled on his coveralls. “Yes, I want to talk to him. Excuse me,” he told Decker, then headed toward the workman.

The Hansons looked overwhelmed by all the activity. “Would you follow me, please?” an officer asked them. “I need to ask you some questions.”